“If a man is offered a fact which
goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the
evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand,
he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his
instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.”Bertrand
Russell, Roads to Freedom

I’m argued out. The
past few months have been a “Night of the Living Asses.” The political universe
has been full of what has been billed as the Healthcare Debate; as far as I am
concerned it more closely resembles children playing in a sandbox, at least on
the Conservative side of the issue. A productive debate presumes that the
parties involved have chosen to argue their respective points with the aim of
learning something, or enlightening others. This further requires that you tell
the truth. In order for debate to be rational, it would seem that one should
allow for the fact that he or she may not be correct. No such dynamic is evident
in the current discussions, much of which I have watched live and in
high-definition. Conservatives seem to be solely trying to sell their point of
view. The only question seems to be, how much of a lie will the public accept?
(Josef Goebbels answered that question years
ago).

Everybody concerned
seems to accept as a given that the healthcare system in the United States is
inefficient, wasteful, and unfair. The problem seems to be financial. The Right
seems to feel that insurance companies are living entities which must be
protected at all cost, much like stem cells. Here is an interesting metaphore:
Say you and your neighbor (perhaps he lives in a house directly to the north of
yours) have bought identical cars. His seems to work fine, starts up each
morning, gets him where he has to go, and his family loves it. On the other
hand, your
car will only work when you are in it alone, breaks
down if you try to take your wife and kids for a
ride, and you seem to spend all your weekends under
the hood with a wrench and socket set. Does it not seem reasonable that
at some point you would ring your neighbor’s doorbell and ask him some pointed
questions?

With all the Senate
and House committee meetings taking place, why has no one suggested asking a
panel of Canadian doctors, members of parliament, and citizens to testify and
offer suggestions? Their system seems to work well enough for
them. In fact, they actually seem to like it! And, after
they leave, sit down with similar groups of Danes, French,
Germans, Australians, Brits, Dutch, and every other civilized
nation in the world that has figured out a way to get this problem under
control. The sun comes up each day in all those other
places, as well as here! Their worlds have not
ended!

I’ll answer my own
question. It’s because they might actually tell the truth to the American
people, and the pinhead Republicans and “Bluedog” Democrats can’t have
that. They wouldn’t be able to collect their fat
“contributions” from the insurance and drug lobbies. The reason you are paying
so much for your drugs, by the way, has nothing to do with the drug industry’s
need for research and development funding. That is a lie. According to research
done by PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program,) drug
companies spend only ten cents of each dollar on R&D, and fifty-one cents on
marketing and profits. The rest goes to manufacturing and taxes. As a matter of
fact, their R&D is heavily subsidized by the U.S. Government (N.I.H.),
meaning you’re not only making them wealthy by paying $200 for a scrip that
would cost you about $4 in Italy, but you’re paying
them again
your
taxes!

Lies!

Oh, Yeah, I almost
forgot. I’m sick to death of hearing from otherwise rational people of how the
rest of the world floods our borders to escape their hideous
medical systems and avail themselves of our first-rate
facilities. What people? How many? How
do they
manage to pay for their care out of pocket,
when we can’t? As a matter of fact, more and
more Americans are going to places like Italy and South America to have their
procedures done, because it’s cheaper, and a lot of their outcomes are better. Imagine
that!

A couple of more
facts: The C.A.T. scan was invented in Great Britain, Canada pioneered
Laparoscopic surgery, and the latest and most promising anti-cancer drug comes
by way of New Zealand! Socialist scum! By the way, amid all the
cries of “Socialism,” the Right has it wrong once more. Under a socialist
system, the hospitals are owned and run by the government, and the doctors are
salaried employees of the same. Much like our own highly efficient and beloved
Veteran’s hospitals. In fact, exactly like our V.A.
Hospitals. The V.A. is also allowed to negotiate with drug companies for lower
prices on the latest and most effective medicines, something our Congress has
forbidden Medicare to do. How come? When called out on this fact at a committee
meeting, one Republican senator replied that since these hospitals and doctors
served vets, they had to be the best, since the
vets deserved only the best! In one sentence, this
fool admitted that a socialized medical structure
worked better than the private system, and that Americans
were not, in fact, getting the “best medical care in the world,” nor did
they deserve it. Was no “journalist” paying attention to
that bit of theater? I heard nothing about it on the news. Liberal media
bias, I guess. Tired of the bullshit going on in that
hearing, I turned to C-SPAN, where a House
committee was holding a hearing on the alarmingly high suicide rate among veterans returning
from Iraq and Afghanistan. So much for your “concern” for our veterans, Senator! Lying
scum.

The latest
tactic of the Right, seemingly right out of the stiff, and addled mind of
Karl Rove, is a series of “grassroots” raucous disruptions of town hall
meetings. These meetings are being conducted by representatives who, through
their own miscalculation, have returned to their districts to gauge the publics’ temperature on
the subject of healthcare reform. I don’t know whether these screamers had teabags or
not.

My guess is that this
embarrassing and transparent tactic will fail, and that the public will,
eventually, get what it has needed and wanted for decades:
Universal Healthcare. By "eventually," I mean somewhere around the New Year. We
can do this. We once walked on the Moon. A few months after Pearl Harbor, we
figured out a way to bomb Tokyo. Heavy Bombers off of the deck of a small
aircraft carrier. That had never been done before; all Roosevelt’s generals said
it couldn't be done, but Doolittle did it. We used to
manufacture the best toasters, televisions, clothing,
and sodas in the world! Yeah, if we don’t
give up, if we stay on their case, if we write, call, fax our representatives
and demand the best
,
they’ll have no choice but to give us what we want. We can do
this!